


Funeral Baked Goods

by cofax



Series: Monroe County [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-23
Updated: 2012-09-23
Packaged: 2017-11-14 22:10:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/520031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cofax/pseuds/cofax
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shon picked up where Canthy left off.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Funeral Baked Goods

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Minnow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Minnow/gifts).



Canthy used to make bread: real 1970s health-food-store bread, with seeds and shit. It didn't taste bad, but man it was dry, and whenever Shon tried to make a peanut-butter sandwich the bread would rip and crumbs and seeds would scatter all over the table.

When Canthy got sick, she stopped baking, and for about six months Monday afternoons were wrong, because there was no odor of proofing yeast and oatmeal and whole wheat baking in the cranky old electric oven. So one Sunday, after Canthy had had a particularly bad morning, Shon dug down the fragile old cookbook, pages stained and binding broken. She didn't think she could handle the stuff that Canthy made, but there was a scrap of paper tucked in front of Page 237, a clipping from the Monroe Courier.

Five dry ingredients, no kneading, and a bottle of beer. She could do that.

The beer bread was a surprising success--mostly due to the melted butter Shon poured over the top--and in the following months she kept it up, getting a little more ambitious each time. Canthy's favorite was the cornmeal-pine nut twists, which looked like little hats.

The night before the funeral, Shon spent twelve hours in the kitchen, mixing, kneading, shaping. Classical french baguettes have the fewest ingredients of almost any bread--flour, yeast, salt, water--but must rise three times and be baked in a hot moist oven. Shon made two dozen long golden loaves, and piled them on the table before changing for the service.

The gathering after the funeral was quiet but not small: Canthy's family had lived in Monroe for seventy years or more, and she knew almost everyone. The Pirellis alone made up a quarter of the guests. Nobody mentioned the bread, among all the hot dishes and plates of brownies and Mike's legendary ambrosia salad. But there was nothing left of it when they were gone, just a few littered ends on the table and crackling bits of crust underfoot.


End file.
